I have been reminded over the past few weeks of the joys and hardships involved in devoting your life to pouring value into other people. I have been running on the ragged edge the last three weeks: working 7 days a week and getting only 4-5 hours of sleep per night.
I have been thinking a lot about my beginnings in Residence Life that date back to the "Glory Days" in Williams Hall, to my time with the boys at White's, to now my second year in Texas at McMurry University-the home of the Indians, no matter what the NCAA may say!
I was finally able to attend my hometeam Bible study tonight and they have been going through a study called Discovering God's Will and the discussion this week centered around pinpointing those people that we turn to for advice in different areas of our lives like Career, Finances, Family, and other major decisions. This discussion was great for me because I was able to think about a bunch of people that have impacted my life (in no particular order)-Dr Voss, Fetz, JMak, James Swanson, Brian Day, Pete Dupont, MOM, Joe, Jeremy, all of my broken hearts/unanswered prayers, Kirk Statler, and many others. Some of the most influential people in my life have been my RA staffs-both the ones that I served on and those that I was priviledged enough to lead-Guys like Matt Hare, Matt McKee, Darren Campbell, Rob Dawson, Jason Benjestorf, Peter Damaska, Jon Allen, Stacy Brown, Eric Nentrup, Todd Bushong, Brian Bradford, Troy Yeager, Seth , Josh Hall, Bobby Fannin, Jake Burns, Josh Kramp, and Dave Wingfield.
I feel like I am in a state of flux because there have been so many changes here in my working life at McMurry that I just don't know what God has in store for me beyond this year. Is there a future for me in student development in Abilene beyond 2007? Does God want me to give up on my dreams for working with students in order to open up an opportunity in another area?
These are the kinds of questions that haunt us all at some point or another and I have come to learn that the reason that I am allowed to struggle with these things is so that I can have the understanding I need in order to minister to college students who are struggling mightily with who they are in God's universe. What I DO know is that God has always been with me and I am so humbled that He has brought into my life friends that have stood the test of time. The picture at the beginning of this blog is a picture that I took this summer of a lamp that stands on the Indiana Wesleyan campus at almost the exact spot where the front of Williams stood. I will always look back on the lessons learned in Williams to light my way for the trials to come. Thank you God for providing a haven like Williams Hall for me to be able to grow and learn the lessons that I needed in order to become the man that I needed to be today.
